I'm coming back to wow for MoP and have a few partly subjective questions, and I am especially interested to hear from players experienced with 2 or more tanking classes.

- How does the Paladin tanking "feel" nowadays? How would you describe its playstyle?

I have a choice of tanking with Paladin, Deathknight, Druid (or could even level a Monk)- Which is the most pleasant to play?- Which is the best for a 10-man raid considering the easiness/difficulty to heal (I will probably play in a very casual roster where healers won't necessarily be the most reactive)? Which tanking class does bring more "utility" to the raid?- In short, should I choose the Paladin to level to 90 first for tanking in a casual group that will nonetheless aim to go as far as possible with limited time resources?

The protection paladin feels pretty good to me, at the moment. It's got significantly more complex, first with holy power and now with active mitigation, but was rather boring - if powerful - before that. To some extent, bears, warrior tanks and protadins all feel rather similar in that they are based around a "resource generator" => "survival resource finisher" mechanic. Personally, I prefer our main finisher - physical damage reduction - to the bear's - dodge - as it gives less spikey damage. The bear's tanking "rotation" feels very basic and incomplete (I find it hard to fill up my main bar with buttons!) whereas ours has been freed up and feels less rigid than before.

I can't speak about monks, but the DK is a very different beast to the other 3 tanks. I feel that with the rune system there is less incentive to mash buttons (you don't need to keep your generators on CD going to maximise your resource) and so the play style is more measured. In some ways, it is more like playing a healer - you think about timing and reacting, rather than going through a pseudo-dps rotation. It's abstract and hard to explain, but I find the blood DK tanking style a thing of beauty.

In terms of ease of healing, they SHOULD be balanced, so I would not worry too much. I suspect the bear might have a rougher ride - partly the spikey dodge thing, but more generally, I think there may be a tuning issue - I have found the bear just squisher than my other 3 tanks. I suspect a DK's health may bounce around rather more than a paladin's, which might freak out the healers, but conversely the DK has much more self-healing and can cope with this volatility more.

So my advice would be go paladin or DK. It's very quick to get a blood DK running - starting at level 56 or whatever, within a couple of hours, you'll be tanking Outland. If you don't like it, stick with the pala. My main is a pala, but I was amazed by how elegant and fun the DK tanking system is - I can see why they remade the other tanks in its image with active mitigation.